If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

The F-35 still has a long way to go before it will be ready for combat. That was the parting message of Dr. Michael Gilmore, the now-retired Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, in his last annual report.

The Joint Strike Fighter Program has already consumed more than $100 billion and nearly 25 years. Just to finish the basic development phase will require at least an extra $1 billion and two more years. Even with this massive investment of time and money, Dr. Gilmore told Congress, the Pentagon, and the public, “the operational suitability of all variants continues to be less than desired by the Services."

Dr. Gilmore detailed a range of remaining and sometimes worsening problems with the program, including hundreds of critical performance deficiencies and maintenance problems. He also raised serious questions about whether the Air Force’s F-35A can succeed in either air-to-air or air-to-ground missions, whether the Marine Corps’ F-35B can conduct even rudimentary close air support, and whether the Navy’s F-35C is suitable to operate from aircraft carriers.

He found, in fact, that “if used in combat, the F-35 aircraft will need support to locate and avoid modern threat ground radars, acquire targets, and engage formations of enemy fighter aircraft due to unresolved performance deficiencies and limited weapons carriage availability.”

In a public statement, the F-35 Joint Program Office attempted to dismiss the Gilmore report by asserting, “All of the issues are well-known to the JPO, the U.S. services, our international partners, and our industry.”

JPO’s acknowledgement of the numerous issues are fine as far as it goes, but there’s no indication that the Office has any plan—including cost and schedule re-estimates—to fix those currently known problems without cutting corners. Nor, apparently, do they have a plan to cope with and fund the fixes for the myriad unknown problems that will be uncovered during the upcoming, much more rigorous, developmental and operational tests of the next four years. Such a plan is essential, and should be driven by the pace at which problems are actually solved rather than by unrealistic pre-existing schedules.

What will it take to fix the numerous problems identified by Dr. Gilmore, and how do we best move forward with the most expensive weapon program in history, a program that has been unable to live up to its own very modest promises?

Electronics Used to Justify Cost Not Delivering Capabilities

The F-35 is being sold to the American people based in no small part on its mission systems, the vast array of sophisticated electronics on board the jet. A quick perusal of any of the hagiographic articles about the F-35 will find that they nearly always point to its capabilities to gather massive amounts of information. This information is supposed to come through its onboard sensors and the data links to outside networked sources, and then be merged by the F-35’s computer systems to identify and display for the pilot the specific threat, target, and accompanying force picture (i.e. “situational awareness”). This process is designed to allow the pilot to dominate the battlespace. Based on the actual test performance of these systems during developmental testing, however, it appears the electronics actually interfere with the pilot’s ability to survive and prevail.

Overall, problems with the F-35’s sensors, computers, and software, including creating false targets and reporting inaccurate locations, have been severe enough that test teams at Edwards Air Force Base have rated them “red,” meaning they are unable to perform the combat tasks expected of them.

Part Shortages and Repair Delays Are Becoming Another Big Problem for the F-35

A report by the U.S. General Accounting Office claims that the readiness of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is being hurt by so-called "sustainment problems"—basically, the inability for maintenance and repairs of the plane to keep up the pace—leading to aircraft being unavailable for flight operations. The report claims that lack of needed parts were a major factor behind aircraft unable to fly.

The GAO report obtained by Bloomberg News says the F-35s faced "significantly longer repair times" because maintenance facilities are six years behind schedule. The F-35 requires new equipment and shops to support it, with more complex jobs being done at a developing network of regional service hubs worldwide.

The Bloomberg report claims that repairs of parts for the new fighter average 172 days, twice the F-35 program's goal. According to the report, the Pentagon and allied countries struggle to continue supporting aircraft in the field as the number of planes ramps up, and warns that the problem of keeping the F-35s flying will worse as more join the international fleet of planes.

The report also warns that the F-35B, which is scheduled to go to sea with the Marine Corps next year, will experience delays as the maintenance and repair capabilities developed to support the F-35B aren't yet ready. The GAO warns that until that is ironed out, F-35Bs sent to sea will likely experience problems.

As alarming as the Bloomberg report is, problems with the sustainment side of the F-35 are to be expected. The plane is several years late, and a lot of timetables are out of whack. The number of planes the Pentagon purchases annually is a moving target, and it's difficult to budget for spare parts and maintenance without concrete figures in hand.

While waiting nearly six months for repaired parts is unreasonable for a plane with a decade of service, it's not exactly unusual for a new plane such as the F-35. These problems get ironed out in time. Now, if these problems persist in four or five years, the Pentagon will have a real problem on its hands. Until then, if the U.S. and its allies want a new plane, they will have to learn to live with uncertainty and growing pains.

Ineffective as an interdiction bomber
There are several major reasons F-35s will have extremely limited interdiction usefulness — the Air Force’s and Marine Corps’ declaration of “initial operational capability” notwithstanding.

For instance, defense companies in Europe, Russia, China and even Iran have been hard at work for years developing and producing systems to defeat stealth aircraft. And they have had some success.

We saw this clearly in 1999, when a Serbian missile unit shot down an F-117 stealth fighter with an obsolete Soviet-era SA-3 surface-to-air missile, a system first fielded in 1961. Serbian air defense crews discovered they could detect the stealth aircraft by using their missile battery’s longwave search radar.

Then, using spotters and the missiles’ own guidance radars, the Serbian forces were able to track, target and kill one stealthy F-117.

To show that was no fluke, the Serbian SAMs hit and damaged another F-117 so badly it never flew in the Kosovo Air War again.

Unaffected by the special shapes and coatings of modern stealth aircraft, these search radars easily detect today’s stealth airplanes, including the F-35. Since WWII the Russians have never stopped building such radars and are now selling modern, highly mobile, truck-mounted digital longwave radars on the open market for prices as low as $10 million. The Chinese and the Iranians have followed suit by developing similar radar systems.

An even simpler system that is even harder to counter than a long wavelength search radar is a passive detection system (PDS) that detects and tracks the radio frequency (RF) signals emitted by an aircraft — radar signals, UHF and VHF radio signals, identification-friend-or-foe (IFF) signals, data link signals like Link-16 and navigation transponder signals like TACAN.

A good example of a modern PDS is the VERA-NG, a Czech system being sold internationally that uses three or more receiving antennas spaced well apart to detect and track and identify the RF signals emitted by fighters and bombers. The system’s central analysis module calculates the time difference of the signals reaching the receivers to identify, locate and track up to 200 aircraft transmitting radar signals.

The VERA-NG is only one of many types of PDS used throughout the world — the Russians, Chinese and others produce PDSs as well, and these have been widely fielded for several years.

The beauty of a PDS, from the perspective of an adversary employing one, is that radar stealth is irrelevant to it ability to detect and track aircraft. If the aircraft has to use its radar, radios, data links or navigation systems to accomplish its mission, the PDS stands a good chance of being able to detect, track and identify it by these emissions.

Every aircraft in the world is susceptible to PDS, stealth and non-stealth alike, and the F-35 is no exception.

The F-35’s main air-to-air weapon, the AIM-120, is a beyond visual range radar missile — as a result, the F-35 has to use a large radar transmitting high-power signals in order to detect airborne targets and then guide the missile to them. Likewise, the aircraft has to employ high-powered ground mapping radar signals to find ground targets at long range.

Moreover, if the plane’s systems have to communicate with other aircraft in the formation or with off-board supporting aircraft like AWACS, it has to use its radios and data links. The F-35 is thus likely susceptible to detection by passive tracking systems. Several of these passive detection systems are significantly less expensive than search radars — and they are virtually undetectable electronically.

The DOT&E report also lists several major reasons for the limited interdiction usefulness.

One such reason is that the F-35’s Block 2B (USMC) and Block 3i (USAF) software prevents it from detecting many threats and targets while severely limiting the kinds of weapons it can carry.

For example, the F-35 can currently only carry a few models of large guided direct attack bombs. None of these can be launched from a distance like a power guided missile. Rather they fall on a ballistic trajectory from the aircraft to the target, which means they can only be released at relatively short ranges in view of the target.

For now F-35 pilots “will be forced to fly much closer to engage ground targets and, depending on the threat level of enemy air defenses and acceptable mission risk, it may be limited to engaging ground targets that are defended by only short-range air defenses, or by none at all.”

The small number of weapon types the F-35 can carry also limits its flexibility in combat. The current software can only support one kind of bomb at a time, which DOT&E says is only useful when attacking one or two similar targets. So, for example, when a flight of F-35s departs loaded with bombs designed to destroy surface targets, they wouldn’t be able to also destroy any hardened or bunker targets because they wouldn’t have the heavier bombs required.

The F-35 is projected to carry a larger variety of weapons as more software, bomb racks and testing to validate these are developed — but we will not know until 2021 which of those weapons are actually combat suitable. Moreover, in order to carry something other than two large guided bombs it will have to use external weapons and racks, significantly reducing the plane’s already disappointing range and maneuverability — and, of course, more or less eliminating stealth.

The ability to penetrate heavily defended airspace to destroy fixed targets deep in enemy territory is an often-cited justification for the F-35. Of course, the F-35’s limited range — less than legacy F-16s — means that it is unlikely to be able to perform what the Air Force likes to call “deep strikes” well inside the homeland of large nations such as Russia and China.